By: Mark Mazer
October 8, 2024
I have to be honest. I hate election seasons. The nonsense from the talking heads, campaign proxies, and the candidates abounds. Everybody lies. It doesn’t matter which side of the aisle they are from, the lies come fast and furious. All of this is annoying but expected. The hard part for me is the blatant ignorance of the voting public who, it would seem, do not take a moment to step back and critically think about the issues in the campaign, what the various pundits and candidates are saying, and then decide.
Another particularly annoying part of this season is the absolutism you hear. When someone says that “Trump (Harris) is going to destroy Democracy,” you can be sure that you are hearing hyperbole designed to stop you from thinking and to get you to react emotionally. And that is the point. Neither side wants you to think. They want you to react.
To borrow a phrase from the now-defunct Syms Clothing Stores, “An educated voter is the best citizen.” Education in this country has gone by the wayside. Kids in high school and college no longer learn civics. They know nothing about how our representative democracy works. They do not understand the beauty behind the electoral college system, as annoying as it may seem sometimes. They do not understand how our government works and, I believe, do not care. Our young people especially, or so it would seem to me, yearn for a system that guarantees they get what they want without effort. It may be that it was always that way. I don’t know, I certainly never thought that way once I got through high school, but it may be that the inexperience and naivete of youth militates that kind of thought. But our colleges do not prepare our students for a real world where you must work and produce to get ahead. Socialism, which has been responsible for more deaths than Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo combined, is once again in vogue. The basic economic concept of TINSTAAFL (There Is No Such Thing As a Free Lunch) is alien. Somehow, they believe, that if we tax the “rich” enough, all our problems will go away.
Bollocks.
There is a lot to unpack here so let me do this one point at a time.
Forbes, Inc., produces a list of “The 400 Richest People In America.” You can see the list for 2024 at The Forbes 400 List 2024 – The Richest People in America Ranked. If you took all of these 400 billionaires and taxed their wealth, not their income, at 100%, the government would acquire $5,439,900,000,000. That’s almost five-and-a-half trillion dollars. Wow! That’s a lot of money and it could solve world hunger! At least that’s what we are told. Well, let’s actually look at the numbers from a practical stand point and see where that leads us.
According to the US census (Poverty in the United States: 2023) (yes, I am going to focus on the US, not the world for this analysis… stay with me and you will understand why), there are 36.8 million people in the US who live below the poverty line. The average household size in the US is 2.51 people per household (Average size of households in the U.S. 2023 | Statista). That comes out to 14,661,355 households below the poverty line.
The stated goal is not to just remove hunger but to provide people with a Basic Living Wage. After all, they need more than food. In January 2024, a study was published by the Economic Policy Institute discussing what constituted a basic living wage by household. Obviously, that number will be different depending on where you live and the size of your household. Using their data, I was able to construct an average BLW for the country of 107,000 per 2.51-person household (which is the figure we are using). OK, that gives us the data we need. Now, let’s see where this works out.
If we totally strip the 400 richest people in America of every dollar they have, here’s what the numbers look like:
| Total Tax Proceeds from Taxing the Rich | $5,439,900,000,000 |
| Total Households Below Poverty Level | 14,661,355 |
| BLW Per Household | 107,000 |
| Number of Years Funded | 3.47 |
So, the numbers show that we could give the poor three-and-a-half years of basic living wage if we beggar the 400 richest people in the United States.
Now, before I go any further, I will admit that this is an absurd scenario. After all, if we take everything away from these people, what will become of their investments? Their companies? The millions of people they employ? The economic effect of the divestments would be devastating and the number of people below the poverty line would dramatically increase, but let’s not let facts and logic get in the way of our little fantasy, shall we?
The bottom line is this: the scheme would not work. Poverty would not be solved.
I am sure that you can review my figures and come to a different analysis and conclusion. Great. That, in fact, is my entire point. When a politician or pundit makes a claim, you need to review its feasibility yourself and make judgments based on analysis, not emotion.
The fact is that the data you need to make informed decisions is all out there for the cost of a simple Google search. You should always check the sources, of course, to see if they have any bias or political bent. For example, the Economics Policy Institute is reputed to lean to the left. That’s OK. Since I was analyzing a left-leaning position, using a left-wing source is perfectly fine by me. It gives me a more appropriate analysis. It means that even if I accept their calculations and theories, the numbers do not add up.
OK, enough of this. Back to my original point.
We have a phenomenal decision to make: Which candidate will occupy the most powerful office in the world? Will it be the Republican, Former President Donald Trump, or the Democrat, Vice President Kamala Harris? The choices we make can have a significant effect on our daily lives. There are important differences between the candidates on both domestic and foreign policy. It behooves us to not only look at what they say but even more so, in my humble opinion, at their respective records. We had four years under Trump and we should look at what that record was. We have had three-and-a-half years of Harris and should look at that record as well. Remember, politicians lie as easily as they breathe. What is more important is what they have done. Finally, when we look at the actions of these two very different candidates, we have to so back in time to when they happened. All this information is on the Internet so we can fact check their record claims ourselves.
Over the next month or so, I plan on getting in to issues and the candidates. I want to show my analyses for you to read. I do not expect agreement, just that you think about the points I make. If you disagree, what is the basis of your disagreement? If you disagree with my facts, what are your sources? If you disagree with my opinions, that is your right and I respect that. But, I think it is really important that we all take a step back and think.
